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I believe if we make black America better, we make all of America better.

Tavis Smiley

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Tavis Smiley
Age: 60
Born: 1964
Born: September 13
Businessperson
Journalist
Radio Personality
Talk Show Host
Television Presenter
Television Producer
Gulfport
Mississippi
Better
Believe
Make
Black
America

More quotes by Tavis Smiley

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There are really only two types of people. Either you're running scared or you're running free. I choose to run free, and you can, too, no matter what your circumstances in life.
Tavis Smiley
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When you work for something, you appreciate it more. So what are y'all going to do with all the opportunities you inherited that you didn't have to work for?
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Even in the era of the first black president, racism is still the most intractable issue in USA. Regarding poverty, half of all Americans are either in or near poverty. Poverty is certainly worse for African-Americans now than it was during King's lifetime.
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Regardless of your race, religion or political affiliation, never hesitate to question those in authority.
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I love the fight. I don't - it's not a negative, it's a positive, and I love the challenge. There's that little part of me that I love proving someone wrong in that way when they have an image of me or something, or they think they have me figured out or they think I'm a certain way.
Tavis Smiley
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Struggling to stay in the middle class, and I love that. That's me and my dad and my family.
Tavis Smiley
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[John Carlos] has spent much of his life since that time as a dedicated human rights advocate and public speaker, and he is out now with a wonderful new text a memoir, in fact.
Tavis Smiley
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My role on television is one of helping people reexamine the assumptions that they hold. I regard Dr. King. You would never hear me get up and speak without in some way, shape or form, referencing, Dr. King.
Tavis Smiley
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I don't think I'd live anything over, even though I've made a lot of mistakes. I have learned how to see failure as a friend. So, I'm not one to live a life of regrets. I try to learn from my mistakes, but I'll take my life the way it is.
Tavis Smiley
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Fear, fear, breeds hopelessness. When you're afraid, you don't know what to believe in, you don't know what to hold on to. You're struggling to find something to believe in.
Tavis Smiley
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He was a humanist then, he's a humanist now, and to my mind John Carlos is an authentic American hero.
Tavis Smiley
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We give you the facts. I told you information is power - knowledge is power. We can't be in an ideological battle to redeem the soul of this country if we don't have the facts.
Tavis Smiley
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This is not a skill problem, this is a will problem. Does America have the will to make education a priority? We know the things that work. Why don't we scale up those things that do work.
Tavis Smiley
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Poverty and wealth inequality are a form of instability into the future.
Tavis Smiley
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The storm came. Lives were washed away. Ancient pains resurfaced. Now it is time for a sea of change.
Tavis Smiley
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Losing teaches you something
Tavis Smiley
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Competition's always been a product of American lifestyle
Tavis Smiley
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I love my cross-sectioned, cross-cultural audience. Some of them are doing better than the average guy, but my audience has always been people who are struggling to stay in the middle class.
Tavis Smiley
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To be clear, the gap between the have gots and the have nots is widening. In this most multicultural, multiracial, multiethnic America ever, that concerns me.
Tavis Smiley
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When I'm at the premiere and I see the film in its entirety, I forget plot, I forget the story, I forget what my character goes through, because I really do just let it go.
Tavis Smiley